


someone to watch over you

by littledust



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-17
Updated: 2007-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments where Simon watched River.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someone to watch over you

01\. So far the baby hasn't done anything interesting. Crying and eating and sleeping aren't particularly special. Simon knows, having done all three himself. But he waits with surprising patience for an eight-year-old boy, waits by the cradle for River. When she opens her eyes, he stretches out a hand and says _mei mei_. As her fingers curl around one of his fingers, he knows that this is important, somehow, that it will always be this way with her, the waiting and then the connection.

02\. Simon prefers watching River practice rather than her ballet recitals. He sees more inherent beauty in her frustration when her body does not move precisely the way she wants it to, the furrowing of her brow as she works out the physics of grace. Recitals are polished plastic, she already bored with mastery, ready to move on. River's mind in motion, that's what he loves, watching her go.

03\. Photographs on the wall remind him every day that he has a little sister and she needs him. She's trapped somewhere out there, so he recaptures her in jagged stills, a collage of grainy color and smooth black-and-white. His colleagues tease him about his girlfriend. After he explains, there is a stare that wonders why no photographs of the rest of his family. He cannot tell them that they have already left, emotionally absent in their selfishness, that River his only family will leave if he does not trap her under glass.

04\. He walks away from Kaylee's sunshine again because it's past time to check on River. She is always caught between waking and sleeping as he walks into the room, never sleeps until he straightens the blankets and strokes her hair, staying with her a while. Tonight she murmurs, _If I ask for the moon you don't have to give it to me._ He accepts the apology but remains by her side; it's the only place he always belongs.

05\. The others watch for her inevitable explosion, some nicer about it than others, but always they look at her pieces and the way her ends are jagged. Simon watches for signs of the girl she used to be, sees what the Academy has done to her, envisions the woman she might still become. It's in the way she handles a knife and walks barefoot through the ship and speaks in jumbled poetry, in her dark depths and glinting surfaces. River flows, floats on.


End file.
